


Sarai's last delivery

by merrysushi



Category: Godsfall (Podcast)
Genre: Other, mind flayer - Freeform, pet death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:14:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23822146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merrysushi/pseuds/merrysushi
Summary: Sarai lost her spouse Jocelyn three years ago.  She left her pasture to her cousin to take up a trade route with a wagon and her dogs.  This was her last delivery.





	Sarai's last delivery

**Author's Note:**

> This is really disturbing, k? I'm not responsible for your nightmares if you read it. To be fair, Aram & Matt started it.

Sarai loaded her wagon with a heavy heart. She hated to leave her home again, even though it wasn’t really her home anymore. Her cousin had taken over the house and flock because Sarai couldn’t stand to live there anymore. Jocelyn died three years ago in the middle of the night. When Sarai awoke that morning she found the love of her life, her spouse, her best friend, cold next to her, unmoving. Since that day she hasn’t stepped foot in that room. Friends and family poured into the small town with help and food and hugs, but even today, three years later, the loss still stung, as fresh as it was that first morning.  
  
Since that day, her cousin let her sleep in the main room when she was visiting, picking up the next load. Sarai always lingered a few days to look over her flock. There were new lambs this year, more than last year, and they were healthy too. She wandered down the hillside, her boots growing heavy with dew, and the flock bleating around her. The three huge sheepdogs bounded around her hoping she’d have an extra piece of breakfast sausage just for them. Sarai might miss these dogs the most. She had dogs that traveled with her, big powerful beasts trained to guard her wagon, but these dogs were loving and always slobbery with kisses.  
  
She sat on a branch of a low tree and watched the sun rise. It was good to be back home, but it was also good to leave. She would take this month’s load to the next town, where she would pick up grain and flour, and then move on. Always in a circle, moving goods from town to town and eventually ending back here, with her sheep and painful memories.  
  
“You took longer than usual this time.” Her cousin greeted her back at the wagon. Sarai just smiled and helped cover the wagon with canvas and straps. This month the neighbor to the north had beautiful sweaters, packaged in lined wooden boxes, to sell at the next town. The dye was a magnificent bright yellow, which reminded Sarai of the buttercups that grew in the pasture. This town was centered on the wool trade. Her cousin raised the sheep, another sheared and bred, another cleaned and carded, another spun, another knit. The neighbor’s grandchild had recently taken up the family business, despite her young age, and had added a brown and cream hat to the load. She told Sarai to make sure to use all of the money from the sale of the beloved hat to buy as much candy as possible.  
  
With the load secured, she checked the horses, hugged her cousin one last time, and set off. As she left the village, the dogs stopped bounding around and took their positions. The shortest was way ahead, a good tracker, with a sense of knowing if the bush rustle was a bandit or a doe. The largest was behind, so that they could not be snuck up on. Sarai had seen her bite before, and pitied the man who tried to raise a hand against her. At the wagon’s side was the fastest, a lean grey dog that could be everywhere at once. Sometimes Sarai thought that one was also the laziest as it was often asleep on the wagon bench with her.  
  
On the fourth day of the journey, the shortest suddenly stopped, and Sarai brought the horses to a halt. She immediately reached under the bench into the secret compartment that held a few bags of silver. It was usually very simple. Of course there were bandits, and those couldn’t be avoided. As the bandits would approach the wagon, she would get off and call her dogs to her. The bandits would search the wagon, perhaps take something, but more often leave things be. She would hand the leader a sack of silver, and they would go their separate ways. Three years of running this route, she knew most of the locations of these groups and was ready for them. Occasionally they would invite her to share a fire and food with them, but they always required that bag of silver.  
  
Here, however, was not a place she expected to be ambushed. Cautiously she walked up to the dog in front and scanned the treeline, but saw nothing. Sarai whistled for her dogs to come to her. The large one in back rushed forward and sat behind her, facing out. The grey one was still on the wagon, and was a little slow getting up. She heard the sound of an arrow being released, and heard the grey dog cry out in pain. The horses bucked and the wagon almost tipped backwards. Sarai shouted in anger and rushed back. Her other two dogs took to the woods, in the direction where the arrow had come from.  
  
No bandit had ever done this before. She knew them. They didn’t want to kill. They just wanted her money. She tried to soothe the horses so she could get to the injured dog. She heard the sounds of her dogs attacking, and then their whines of pain. Tears sprung to Sarai’s eyes, and a rage overtook her. Who were these monsters, who would kill her beautiful creatures, her friends?  
  
For a few moments there was nothing, silence. The horses calmed and she was able to climb back on the wagon to comfort her dog as it passed in her arms. She would be crying hysterically now, like she did the morning Joceyln died, if it wasn’t for her rage. She yelled through her tears. “Show yourselves! You savages! You killers! Show me your faces before you take my life! I need to know who I should haunt beyond my death!”  
  
An elf stepped out of the tree line. An elf? There were no elves around here! And why was it so pale? Was this anger making her see things? It spoke in common, “You will not be harmed. We are not here to kill you.” Sarai seethed. “You have already killed me! My dogs lie dead at my feet! Are you going to shoot the horses too? Why don’t you just rip my heart from my body?”  
  
The elf looked down, smiled, and shouted orders in elvish. Sarai looked behind her, and more of elves appeared. She drew her knife and jumped off the wagon, ready to fight. “I am not afraid! I am not afraid of death!” She spun wildly in a circle, trying and failing to keep them all within her sight. One elf approached her from the back and grabbed an arm. She used that momentum to turn around and strike him in the shoulder. Blood appeared and more adrenaline coursed through her body. The others closed in. She got a few good cuts in before they bound her wrists behind her back, gagged her, and threw a bag over her head. Many hands lifted and threw her. She landed in the wagon, on a pile of fleece. As the wagon turned around, the anger that had coursed through her veins faded and all she was left with was immense sorrow. She cried herself to sleep.  
  
For three days they traveled during the night, and stopped during the day. Sarai got very little sleep as the back of the wagon was too bumpy at night, and it was too bright during the day. The elves gave her food and water, but never lay a hand on her. She heard tales of women, and men, being taken from the road and sold into slavery, somewhere it was legal. If that was what they were doing, she would have assumed they would have taken advantage of her by now. They were almost… kind? Sarai kept having to remind herself they were killers, even when they helped feed her.  
  
Over the few days she took the time to study them, as she had never seen an elf up close before. They were slender, pale creatures. Their hair was light like their skin. The only time she had seen elves was in markets. But now she was a mere foot from them and they didn’t seem to mind if she stared. The most beautiful thing about them was their eyes. It was a purple she had only seen before in tiny flowers that grew in the meadows. Despite not being a dyer herself, she knew that to get wool bright colors was difficult, and the dyes were closely guarded secrets. If her village could distill the color of these elves’ eyes into the wool, it would be prized everywhere. She smiled briefly, imagining pulling the eyes from these elves with her bare hands.  
  
Sarai didn’t ask questions, because she knew that they wouldn’t answer. In the middle of the night, the wagon drew to a halt, and they lifted her out. She stood for a while in place, her feet also bound, trying not to tip over. Sarai had never been good at balancing. Around her she could hear the chatter of more elves, not excited or afraid, but just… diligent? They carried Sarai into a tent and bound her to a pole on the ground, and took the bag off her head. Is this the point where she would be sold into slavery, that someone would take advantage of her?  
  
For hours she knelt in this awkward position, her left leg fully asleep and she herself was nodding off. A commotion at the other side of the tent woke her and she looked up. If seeing the pale elves was strange, this was tenfold that. Sarai wasn’t afraid of bandits or killers, but whatever THIS was, this was frightening. This was a thing from nightmares.  
  
Sarai’s mind swam in confusion and fear, and she blinked to clear her eyes, hoping it was an illusion. The many tentacled figure approached, each writhing like a snake, seemingly on its own. There was some semblance of a face and a body, but the rest was inhuman. Sarai just stared. Her mouth was dry around the gag, and slightly open in wonder. The creature slowly approached, almost hovering, so that Sarai had to strain to look up at it. It grotesquely swallowed one of its arms and spoke in a husky voice. “Why are you afraid of me?”  
  
She had no answer. No good answer. For one, the combination of her dry mouth and the gag made it impossible to speak. For another…. She studied the creature, looking at his eyes, trying to figure out if there was something behind those eyes, or if it was just something that would kill her. What was it? She had more questions than answers.  
  
The creature stood in silence for a few moments and then moved behind her. More fear shot threw her and she braced herself to be taken. It shifted behind her, and held her head still. She could feel the sticky cold tentacles on her cheeks, and she shivered. There was a creaking and cracking of bones and she felt the creature’s breath on the back of her neck. In her head reverberated the words, “You have failed your people, you have failed to stop Sigma.”  
  
Sarai didn’t understand. My people? My shepherding town? Sigma? There was no time to ponder as a sharp pain entered the top of her head. She heard her skull cracking before the scream left her lips. A pain worse than the heartache of the loss of Jocelyn. A pain worse than seeing her animals killed in front of her eyes. She had it all wrong. There was no slavery, there was no sex, she was being EATEN. A last scream, and then it was black.  
  
She didn’t expect to awake from death. Perhaps the gods existed? Perhaps the priests were wrong? It was dark and she was scared. A young elf and an old elf appeared in front of her, both pale, like the ones who captured her. The first muscular and handsome, the latter wizened and kind. “Welcome to the labyrinth.” They said together, and then both disappeared. Sarai lay down and cried.


End file.
